And by then the world was beginning to feel bearable again.
That day, the dawn had begun with an unusually rosy glow. Rust-stained tugboats and overloaded barges passed by below her window. The broad dark river fascinated her. It was like a living being, with its swirling oil slicks and currents like ropes of muscle twisting in the wake of the boats. Sweet Thames.
Sometimes her head felt almost as stuffed full of random quotes as it was of faces. The words all came from the boxes of books people donated to the orphanage, of course. There weren’t only lurid potboilers, detective stories, thrillers and romances, but also hefty Victorian novels and poetry collections, too — Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Hardy, Keats, Wordsworth, Spenser — as well as children’s books by Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and Jacqueline Wilson. Zelda had read them all, from cover to cover. Her recollection of words wasn’t as good as it was of faces — she certainly didn’t have a photographic memory — but it was probably better than average, and she remembered a lot. She was hungry to learn, and those hours spent reading in a foreign language that was becoming more her own every day, were the happiest times of her life. Until the day that life came to an abrupt end.
In those dark hours, as the bad memories ebbed with the growing light, the healing power of the music and the numbing effect of the tranquillisers, she often wondered why she had never been tempted by suicide. But she never had. Once, perhaps, she had come close. In a small and ugly motel near Banja Luka, exhausted and hurting after a particularly long night of rough and filthy long-distance lorry drivers, the idea had reared its head briefly. She had considered whether the belt of the dress that lay draped over the bedside chair would be long enough and strong enough for her to hang herself from the coat hook on the back of the locked door. But she had never got as far as finding out before the door opened again and another man came in.
Thoughts of the past began to dissipate, the music ended and Zelda put her headphones away to make more tea as she contemplated going out for breakfast. Then she began to think about Hawkins and all that had happened since that night Alan and Annie came for dinner just before Christmas. It seemed almost a lifetime ago.
If she was going to stay in London for a few more days, she could do a bit more detective work. She had lain dormant for too long, but news of Hawkins’s death galvanised her towards action. Over the past few months, she had thought more than once about reporting what she had seen that evening she had followed him. But to whom? She couldn’t be certain that she trusted anyone in the department. It was the same reason she hadn’t told Alan. When all was said and done, she had withheld the information for her own reasons. If she had reported on Hawkins meeting Keane, a known criminal, that would have been the end of it one way or another. She would have been cut out of any investigation, if there was one, and she would never find Keane, or Petar and Goran Tadić, the ones she really wanted.
First, she needed a plan. If Hawkins had been meeting Keane to tell him about her interest in the photo of him with Petar Tadić — and what other reason could there be? — it meant that Hawkins was in bed with the enemy, perhaps feeding them information so that some of the most wanted men could evade discovery. Perhaps he had also informed them when Zelda would be on duty at a specific port, station or airport, so they could avoid it. If so, the enemy had turned against him — not unusual in that risky and violent business — and she would like to know why. Had he tried to escape their clutches, tried to break free from them? He should have known the price of that. She also remembered that Banks and Annie had told her that Keane liked fires. He would probably know all about chip pans.
So what could she do? She was marooned in London for a few days, which wasn’t an unpleasant situation. Normally, she would invite Raymond down for a mini-break, but he was away in America for meetings in advance of an important US exhibition coming up soon. She could do some shopping, go to the Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern, try to get some last-minute theatre tickets. Shakespeare at The Globe, perhaps? But no. She remembered the last time she’d been there, trapped at the far end of a row, feeling claustrophobic and unable to escape a dreadful production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It had been more like a midsummer night’s nightmare.
Anyway, there were plenty of diversions for her in London, but the main thing, she realised, was to work out what she could do about Hawkins and Keane. Danvers and Deborah wouldn’t tell her anything, that was for certain, and she didn’t really know where to start. She had drawn a blank following Hawkins on those few occasions over the last months she had been able to do so, but perhaps if she applied herself now, with so much free time on her hands, she might be able to find out more. At least she could make a start by going to have a look at his burned-out house.
Unlike the numerous television depictions of large open-plan offices crowded with scruffy detectives in a fug of cigarette smoke, shirtsleeves rolled up, ties askew, resting the backs of their thighs against desks overflowing with unfinished paperwork, Styrofoam coffee cups in hand and phones constantly ringing, there were only four people present at the Tuesday morning briefing in the boardroom of Eastvale Regional HQ, and all were seated, none smoking.
The room was wood-panelled with ornate ceiling cornices, a chandelier and a large and highly-polished oval table. The accoutrements were all present — the large flat-screen TV set, the ubiquitous whiteboards plastered with photographs of the victim from all angles, indecipherable scrawls and arrows linking one thing to another. And the coffee cups, not Styrofoam but paper. From large gilt-framed oil paintings on the walls, nineteenth-century wool barons with mutton-chop sideboards and roast-beef complexions watched over the proceedings.
Banks gathered up his notes. He had enjoyed his dinner with Joanna MacDonald the previous evening. When she let her guard down even just a little, she was charming and entertaining company — funny, sharp, intelligent — wise, even. He wondered again, as he often had, why she so rarely allowed herself the lapse, kept herself on such a tight rein. After dinner, he had got home in time for a fairly early night, with very little to drink, and as a result he felt unusually refreshed that morning.
‘As of now,’ he began, ‘we still have nothing much to go on. The boy looks about thirteen years old, he’s dark-skinned, maybe of Middle Eastern heritage, but he could have grown up here, for all we know. He’s been stabbed four times, and we found a small amount of cocaine in his jeans pocket. Most likely he didn’t live locally, or the odds are that we’d have located someone who would have seen him around. I know, as you all do, that the East Side Estate in general can be pretty uncommunicative, if not actively against us on occasion, but though there are plenty of drugs circulating, there are few murders there, and it’s my sense that the people are in shock. I don’t believe everyone we’ve talked to so far is lying about not knowing the boy.’
‘So how did he get there and where did he come from?’ asked DC Gerry Masterson.
‘That we don’t know,’ admitted Banks. ‘And we need answers. Out of town, most likely, I’d say. There aren’t any Middle Eastern families living in Eastvale, as far as I know. It’s possible he was a student, I suppose, but I’d say he was too young to be at the college. Again, that can be easily checked. He may have been visiting friends in the area. Something else we’ll have to follow up on. Wherever he’s from, someone dumped him on our patch and it’s our job to find out who. We’ve got an appeal out with the media, so someone will have to collate the responses, should any come in. The ACC has authorised a working budget, AC Gervaise has okayed overtime and civilian staff to man the murder room, and we have extra uniformed officers pounding the streets.